The Congress on Thursday released the list of candidates for the Rajya Sabha elections scheduled for June 18, naming a leader who can win only if Tamil Nadu’s TVK party supports him. While the Congress does not have enough seats of its own to win over Pravin Chakravarty, the party leader is the beneficiary of what can be seen as a gift from Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay’s TVK to the grand old party.
Vijay is essentially paying for Congress’ support in forming the state government, and Chakravarty has been a big supporter of the alliance. So much so that he said he wants an alliance before the elections instead of waiting for the poll results to break away from the DMK.
Chakravarti heads the Data Analytics and Professionals Wing of Congress.
Before the Congress released the list of candidates on Thursday, CM Vijay allocated Tamil Nadu’s only Rajya Sabha seat to the party, a significant gesture that highlighted the growing cordiality between the two parties. The TVK is seen as a potential new component of the Congress-led India bloc at the Centre, although the DMK has already shown signs of leaving it behind.
After announcing the list of RSP candidates, Chakravarty expressed his gratitude to both Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, and Tamil Nadu CM Vijay. He called himself “the first MP candidate of the Tamil Nadu Progressive Alliance for Social Justice (TVK INC VCK IUML CPI CPM)”.
He further said that if elected, he would carry the mandate of the Alliance workers to Parliament and asserted that he would serve as an “honest” voice for the Tamil people in the House.
The man behind the unusual alliance
When Vijay’s TVK struggled to get the numbers needed to form a stable government in Tamil Nadu last month, the Congress was the first party to lend its support to five multi-party political parties.
Over the next few days, smaller parties like CPI, CPI(M), IUML and VCK joined in and Vijay was sworn in as Prime Minister on 10 May.
The alliance was not just a post-election decision, according to Chakravarty, who in an interview with Rediff said that a majority of Tamil Nadu Congress workers favored an alliance with TVK even before the elections.
Pointing out that he said that he had a “role” in forming the coalition.
When asked why the Congress abandoned its partnership with the DMK, Chakravarty said in that interview that TVK’s secular ideology was very similar to that of the Congress, and that Vijay was a “rising face”.
However, this cordiality may have cost the Congress its ally in the India bloc, the Stalin-led MK Party, as the party announced not to attend the June 8 meeting of the All-India National Development Alliance, citing sentiments of cadres and supporters after the Congress’s “betrayal”.
